All Over Again
by nagato chinatsu
Summary: The year is 1939, and all Max wants to do is pass his exams, get his own flat, and impress his sister's friend. But now they're not calling his parents' war the Great War. They're calling it World War One, and it turns out it was just the beginning.
1. Chapter 1

Own nothing.

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"Da?" Max called, peering into the study. "Hey, Da?"

"In the kitchen," came his father's reply. He was stirring a mug of black coffee and reading some important looking documents. "What is it?"

"Tonight, for dinner..." He suddenly felt like his question was absolutely daft and should not be asked. "Ah..."

"Rosalind's not coming," Da said, turning a page. _Barking spiders, how did he do that? _

_"_How did you do that?" he demanded, running a hand through his sandy hair.

"You make this sort of strange face when you think about her. Looking back, your mother did it too." His father smiled, clearly remembering something. "But why the sudden interest? Whatever happened to that girl Jeanie?"

"Arty," he said darkly. "Arty happened to Jeanie." Max's cousin Artemis was his on-again off-again best mate, but his presence seemed to create this sort of vacuum that girls got sucked into. He was the most confident person he had ever met, yet he was also oddly charming. It wasn't bloody fair that clumsy, awkward Max had a cousin like that to compete with.

"Something about a man in uniform," Arty had said. "Ask your ma." at the time, Max thought it had been a joke, but her asked his mother about it and was treated to the most bizarre story he had ever heard.

Jeanie had been pretty, very pretty indeed. But his sister's new friend had erased every trace of her from his memory. Rosalind Franklin was not just a bonny face; she was one of the smartest people he had ever met. She could go on and on about life-threads (they're calling them dioxy-something acid now), while Max could manage a boring conversation about working in a mechanik's shop. However, she never made him feel stupid or inferior, and showed great interest in his work.

His father's voice brought him back to reality.

"You don't think... ah, you don't think they've done anything _bad_, have they? You know, -" his voice dropped- "-_marital_ things?"

If Max had been drinking something, he would have choked on it.

"No. No, they- I mean, I don't think- he hasn't- just... _no._" The answer was probably _yes,_ but he decided it would be best not to say anything.

"Oh... good," his Da finished vaguely. "You- you haven't done anything bad either, right?"

"No." This was quickly becoming even more awkward than the time his mother had found the pin-up calendar under his bed. "Can we please not talk about this?"

"Sure." There was a note of gratefulness in his voice.

Max bounded up to his room. Just as his door closed, the front door opened.

"Hello, schatz," he heard his father say. "How was your... Is something the matter? You look worried."

"Haven't you listened to the wireless-" -it's a _radio,_ Mam, call it a _radio-_ "-At all today?"

"No. Why?"

"It's just like last time all over again. 'Mergency draft." Max could hear pacing, and his mother sounded close to tears. "Thought we stopped it. I thought it was all over..."

"You mean..." His father swore softly in German. "_Max._ No. Not my son. They can't- they- my _son,_ they just- _mein Sohn..._"

He had never heard his father cry before, and it was disturbing. He raced down the stairs.

"Mam? What's going on?"

She let out a great sigh, and she suddenly seemed a lot older than forty. His father had turned away so Max couldn't see his face.

"There's been a declaration of war," she said softly. "Your draft card will come in the mail soon."

No one notice Bovril padding in.

"Thought it was all over," it said sadly.


	2. Chapter 2

Own nothing. Ain't Misbehaving is a real song. I had to do it in the three vocal lessons I went to, so I kind of love it and hate it at the same time.

By the way, pretty much every school in England is Christian, and they have school services and stuff. My good friend is British, and she think Americans are too "sensitive" about religion in schools.

And now for something completely different from chapter one.

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Breaking out of boarding school lost its thrill after the dozenth time or so. Her bags had already been packed, unpacked, and repacked. She pushed open the window, blocking the gust of autumn air with her body. _Bloody English climate._ Tanit climbed out feet first, and her right toe found the spot where a brick was missing. From there she was able to jump to the oak branch and shimmy down the trunk.

She dropped to the roots with a muffled thud and dusted off her hands. Easy. Her head tipped back for a moment, and the sky was clear and cold above her. She wanted to swim in it.

"There goes my civilized education," she murmured in Turkish, ducking through the gate surrounding Saint Anges's School for Young Ladies. Her mother would be _so angry,_ and the thought made her grin. Tanit had never understood why she had been sent away to boarding school in a faraway country, as she considered herself quite learned. Well, at least she could vote here, not that she cared for any of the politicians. She adjusted her grip on her satchel and began the long walk back to town. At times she ran, darting across the road and jumping boulders, just for the sake of feeling the wind tug at her cuffs. You couldn't do this in a skirt.

The outfit had come out quite nicely, in her opinion. The saddle shoes would just pass as men's, though she wished she had a pair of shiny black boots. The shirt looked decent, but her slacks were creased from being folded and hidden under her mattress. She thought the black fedora had been a nice touch, angled jauntily on her head. There was just one thing off, though.

Tanit sat on a fallen log at the roadside and wrapped her shawl over her shoulders like a cape. She then pulled her long, dark, hair into a pigtail and hacked it off with her sewing scissors. The hair was then thrown in the woods, and the scarf shaken out. She'd get it done properly in town.

"Just a trim, please," she said. Her voice sounded ridiculously deep, like a little boy trying to sound like a man. "Just a trim, please?" No, girly! Damn it. She cleared her throat. "Jus' a trim, please." Well, it was passable, at the least. Her pilot's license threatened to stumbled out of her coat pocket, and she stuffed in back in.

She wondered what the headmistress would write to her mother, and she relished the thought of making that horrid old woman squirm. Miss Pauline was a vicious thing, and constantly mentioned the old days when teachers would have been allowed to "beat the heathen out of her."

As the lights of Cambridge grew brighter over the hillside, she softly sang to that lovely September sky.

"Ain't misbehaving, I'm saving my love for you."

Ooh, she couldn't _wait_ to be in the Royal Air Force.


	3. Chapter 3

Own nothing. The German is all Google Translate and probably pretty bad.

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Max traced over the carvings on the arm of the couch. They perhaps had once shown the Darwinist lion, but were now worn down to nubs by the fingers of three children and many cousins. The wood was smooth beneath his fingers, and it gave him a little comfort.

He knew he should to the proper, mature thing and join the conversation in the kitchen. Arty and Uncle Jas had come over, and they were talking with his parents in hushed voices. Blackout curtains, neighborhood watch, that kind of thing.

"I will not deny my heritage," came a fierce whisper.

"Not asking you to," came the voice of his uncle, calm and collected as always. "Just... maybe, don't speak German in public and such, you know..."

"That's reasonable," said his mother. "Aye?"

"I suppose," Da said broodingly.

Max could still remember his first day of school. It had gone fine until lunch, when no one sat with him. He had asked Alan Jameson why.

"Cause, you're a German."

"No, I'm not," he said, uncomprehending. "I'm Scottish, same as you. My ma's Scottish. And my da's Austrian, but now he's got his citizenship."

"Germans killed my uncle," was all Alan had said.

His fingers rubbed savagely at the carving.

It had begun to rain in dark, angry streaks. Max knew he should be afraid of _something_, but he was not. He felt sort of numb, but with a grim determination.

A jingling, scraping noise at the door made him look up. Soph always had a hard time with her keys. She had bad vision, but was too vain to wear her horn-rimmed glasses outside of work.

"I don't need them, is all, Dylan," she would say as she squinted at him from down the hall.

"_Dummkopf,_ I'm Max," he would say, grinning, and she would throw the nearest cushion at him and, of course, miss.

He bounded to the door and let her in, gamely hanging up her coat and putting her valise in the hall closet. Her brown hair was black with rain and falling out of its bun, plastering itself to her face. The tips of her fingers and nose were red with cold.

"You're absolutely soaked."

"Never mind that," she snapped. "There's a bloody war on!" Sophie had already begun to pace, a habit picked up from Da.

"It's not like no one saw this coming." Max reallized the truth of his words as soon as they were out.

"Dylan's not home yet, is he?" she asked, perching on the arm of the couch.

"Nah, staying over at Christopher's. But what about you? How did you get the news?"

Sophie shrugged. "Doc B. always seems to know about those things a good while before they happen. Dead clever."

"And a right bitch!" he said admiringly. His older sister tried to keep her face stern and failed.

"She's not- She's opinionated, is all!"

"Is that our pretty Sophie?" called Uncle Jaspert from the kitchen.

"Soaked Sophie," she responded grimly.

"Sodden Sophie," Max grinned.

"Soggy Sophie!"

Haven't seen you in ages," said Jaspert, kissing her on the cheek. "I expect you're up to all kinds of secret fab military business, now?"

"My assistant Rosalind is a _genius,_" she said enthusiastically. "We're using x-rays to take images of DNA. The doctor and I are working on the shape. We think it's sort of a spiral-"

"_Roz?_" Max sputtered. "Roz Franklin?"

"Max fancies Rosalind," his sister explained. "But not in the sweet, romantic way. In the odd, gawking, speechless way."

"Just like his father," said Ma from the doorway. Da looked like he was split between retorting and laughing. Instead, he greeted Sophie.

Sophie! Wir dich vermisst. Ist die Arbeit gut? Ihr Assistent scheint ein kluges Mädchen sein."

"Sie ist sehr gut. Barlow denkt, sie ist auch super. Wir sind so viel zu tun im Labor nun," she said, beaming and embracing her parents. Max stared at his feet. "Max mag es nicht, wenn wir deutsch sprechen. Er ist nicht so fließend wie ich, so fühlt er sichwie ein Dummkopf."

"Hey! I understood the bit about me being a dummkopf! And I..." he translated haltingly into English. "I at least speak more German than Dylan."

"Well, I didn't understand any of it," said Artemis, ruffling Sophie's damp hair.

"That's fine, Uncle Jaspert."

"I'm Arty."

"I knew that."

"I know a little German," mused their uncle. "None suitable for polite company."

"You would, Jas," Ma muttered as she sat down.

And as his family laughed and joked, Max realized that there were things worth facing fear for.


End file.
